Guitar Hero III rocks St. Patrick's Day with Dropkick Murphys

Woman ZeroMan Zero (right) rocks out on Guitar Hero III with his friend Nate, who has the advantage of actually knowing how to play guitar. In honor of St. Patrick's Day, they kicked things off with the game's three new Dropkick Murphys tracks.

Rock Band may add drums and vocals to the mix, but Guitar Hero isn't becoming irrelevant anytime soon. Guitar Hero III is the life of the party again this St. Patrick's Day as it offers three downloadable songs from Irish punk rock outfit the Dropkick Murphys — free.

"Famous for Nothing", "(F)lannigan's Ball" and "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya" — OK, I'll admit I'd never heard any of these songs before, but there's a teeny tiny bit o' the Emerald Isle in my mutt lineage, so I'm down with just about anything Irish this time of year.

Especially if it's Guinness. And corned beef boiled in Guinness. My friend Nate and I had plenty of both Saturday night (which was when the Catholic Church said we were supposed to celebrate St. Patricks Day), and the Dropkick Murphys were all the motivation we needed to break out Guitar Hero. I even borrowed a friend's guitar for some co-op play.

After playing through the Dropkick Murphy's pack, we switched to co-op career mode. It was at this point that I realized how deep Guitar Hero III can be. First off, the co-op career has a totally different story than the single player.

I know, the story is just a rapid-fire animated mess of rock cliches. And it's not like co-op gets you different stages to play on. But it's a good laugh between songs nonetheless.

Even better is that co-op career lets players unlock songs that aren't unlockable in single player. Every "set" consists or three songs (you pick from a list of four or five), followed by an optional one-song encore. Playing an encore song for the first time unlocks that song for use in other game modes.

So before I knew it, we were unlocking songs like The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," The Strokes' "Reptilia," and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Suck My Kiss."

While Ryan Eilders assures me that the ladies love Rock Band, the ladies at our party were getting into the Guitar Hero as well, with Woman Zero and her friend Michaela tearing down the game's learning curve in near-record time.

Long story short: You don't need drums and vocals to enjoy a good rhythm game at a party. A few pints of Guinness and some solid free music will do the job quite nicely.

Still, it would have been sweet if they had included The Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping up to Boston" from the movie "The Departed." Banjo Hero anyone?